“If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.”—Epictetus

Monday, March 28, 2016

Remembering the Great Sommelier Eradication

Gone, but quickly forgotten

Sure, there were some protests, a few heartfelt complaints. None of that was unexpected. The kamikazes at PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Sommeliers) were their usual strident selves. A handful of women openly wept, but they were mostly mothers of sommeliers, and people understood. A few ethicists wondered if it was the right thing to do. But now that it’s over, it seems everyone agrees it was the best course; indeed, it was the only course. There were simply too many. And an overpopulation calls for the simplest and most direct answer. They had plenty of warning. It took years before the decision to cull the sommelier herd became official. And now that most of them are gone, I think we can all recognize that the world is a better place.

When we began to produce so many sommeliers, some time around the turn of the century, we didn’t realize how successfully they would thrive in the urban environment. Like the other “garbage species,” opportunists like rats and coyotes and crows, sommeliers soon spread everywhere. We’ve all had the experience of cruising through downtown in our driverless cars and being startled by the sudden appearance of a sommelier darting out from between parked cars, their highly polished tastevin reflecting the headlights, and our car only narrowly avoiding running them down. Yet in many major cities, sommelier road kills kept santitation departments extremely busy. It became a huge problem. Let’s face it, most dumps won’t accept sommeliers. Well, most dumps aside from hotel restaurants and major wine conglomerates. Too many road kill sommeliers ended up piled on the side of the road like so many waterlogged mattresses, Serta-fied sommeliers. They were eyesores, a public nuisance, and proud of it.

Maybe we should ask ourselves why we allowed the sommelier population to get out of hand in the first place. By 2020, we knew there was a problem, yet we continued to turn a blind eye to it. More and more certification programs appeared, nearly all of them morally bankrupt and useless, aimed at creating more sommeliers. There was a time not so long ago when a sommelier was a rare sight, akin to spotting a whooping crane, or an attractive wine blogger. Suddenly, seemingly overnight, they were everywhere. You couldn’t go to a wine bar without the server being a sommelier. You couldn’t attend a wine tasting without the room suddenly filling with sommeliers, who, in a weird parody of cockroaches, would quickly fill the room when the lights came on. Maybe we ignored the trend because they were so harmless, and relatively odorless, at least compared to the liquor reps. Or maybe we thought that once everyone realized that there just wasn’t room for any more sommeliers, they’d stop growing in number. Whatever the reasons, we shamefully ignored the sommelier pestilence, and we all bear some responsibility for the end result. Thousands of sommeliers humanely eradicated. Admit it, now that it’s over, it felt good.

The shelters worked for a while. Rounding up starving and inbred sommeliers, the newly minted and deranged sommeliers, and housing them in temporary shelters hoping that they’d be adopted was a grand idea. The goal was for restaurant owners, wine shop owners, winery owners, anyone who had some need for a pet sommelier, to adopt one from the Sommelier Shelters rather than hire a new one. You could walk into a shelter and pick one out, one with the cutest eyes, or one that might have been a mongrel, perhaps rabid for natural wine and destined for a short life, but who spoke to you. But soon the shelters overflowed. Sommeliers by the dozens were just dumped on their doorsteps by disappointed owners who had found they just couldn’t live with their sommelier any longer, the constant yapping late at night, their bottomless need for attention, becoming just too much. Sommelier Shelters began surreptitiously releasing sommeliers back onto the streets under the cover of darkness, giving them a few dollars and a bottle of orange wine to live on. It became a national disgrace, the worst since Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for President. Something needed to be done.

Of course, a majority of the self-proclaimed sommelier population weren’t actually sommeliers. They were pretenders. They asked each other, “What level sommelier are you?” as though sommeliers were practitioners of kung fu, or were parking garages. They took class after class to learn facts about wine, as though facts were knowledge, as if knowledge were wisdom. A First Level Sommelier, the thinking went, is still a sommelier. The same reasoning applies in cultures who think 13-year-old girls are ready to be wives. But it didn’t matter if they were actually sommeliers, any more than it matters what species of rat is taking over your apartment. You just want them gone. They’re a nuisance, and it’s embarrassing to be with friends and everywhere you turn there are sommeliers skulking about. You feel like you need a shower.

When the Sommelier Shelters didn’t solve the problem, and hunting down the last of the Master Sommeliers with drones targeting Le Paulée tastings, and destroying countless bottles of fake Burgundy as collateral damage, didn’t seem to end the infestation, the inevitable started to become reality. It was time to cull the sommelier herd. They’re not hard to catch. Sommeliers are nocturnal, shunning actual sunshine where others might see their jaundiced skin, and not particularly intelligent. In fact, even faced with growing unpopularity, they are blind to it, and will just walk right up to you and tell you they are a sommelier, and usually in the first sentence. They learned this behavior from doctors, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to which they are closely related—all three species believe they know more than you do despite evidence to the contrary. Their behavior made them especially easy prey for the people hired to cull their numbers. Maybe the most challenging part of the Great Sommelier Eradication was administering the lottery to choose the people who would cull the sommeliers. Some estimates put the volunteers in the tens of thousands.

Many people demanded that all sommeliers should be eliminated. A radical view, but one that is easily defensible, especially if you know any. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and sommeliers who actually worked as sommeliers—didn’t just have letters after their names, or had lowered themselves to actually make wine, a crime in most states—were left undisturbed. A few hundred now remain around the world in their natural state. More than enough.

Except for their immediate families, and natural wine producers, no one misses sommeliers. Sommelier Shelters are now filled with baristas, yet another national shame. Their “time” is coming. We can only vow that we will never again allow the population of sommeliers to overrun society. We can insure that there are never again countless phony wine accreditation schools that rob our young people of a real life. And now that it’s legal to shoot anyone who claims to be a sommelier, any fucking level, who doesn’t actually work as a sommelier, the arguments over gun control have also vanished. Culling the Sommelier herd worked.

You know you're doing something right when a blogger (how is that still a thing?) writes a satyr piece on your craft! Hope the other 7 people that read this enjoys it as much as I did. I'm the guy in the upper right of the photo.

Not sure if Keith meant to do it, but great use of the word satyr (definition: one of a class of lustful, drunken woodland gods. In Greek art they were represented as a man with a horse's ears and tail, but in Roman representations as a man with a goat's ears, tail, legs, and horns). Is he referring to the HoseMaster or to all Somms?It must be SATIRE!

I notice none of the herd made it beyond the shelters into rescue. This was a wise move. A Somm rescue would have been like that rat situation you described. We don't want to be keeping them around! Bravo and pass the ammunition.

All kinds of awesome. I have also felt for too long that I am the only "somm" that thought "Somm" was the most painful and terrible movie ever made. Ever. Incidentally, we had the same problem with the cooking school "chefs" explosion and are now in the midst of a mass and well-deserved die off.

Pietro,You have hit on what satire aims to do. Satire often tries to make the reader think, "I thought I was the only one who thought that way." It's a form of telling the kinds of truth too many people think but are unwilling to express, and, one hopes, doing it in a funny fashion. So thank you.

Joe,Where you bin? And I think I can arrange that mercy killing. Have you met Marcia? Oh, you will...

Is there concern of any crossbreeding with mixologists or the aforementioned baristas? Resulting hybrids could allow them to hide in neighborhoods and regions that were until now did provide a suitable ecosystem.

Ron, you hit this one out of the park. I laughed at some point during every paragraph, and like Mary Orlin, particularly enjoyed the lines that she quoted. Also, the full sentence prior to "Serta-fied sommeliers" got me - "Yet in many major cities, sommelier road kills kept sanitation departments extremely busy. It became a huge problem. Let’s face it, most dumps won’t accept sommeliers. Well, most dumps aside from hotel restaurants and major wine conglomerates." Watching the increasing employment of squads of somms at the big distribution companies is cringe-worthy.Faithfully yours,Don

Joe,Well, at least you'll have clean drains. Rosé is being made by too many people who haven't a clue, and that's a shame. Spend an hour judging them for a wine competition and you'll swear off them forever.

Don,I don't begrudge anyone a job. There aren't enough actual restaurant jobs for all the folks claiming to be sommeliers, French Laundry can only go through sommeliers so fast, so working for Jackson Family (I think they have a company baseball team of MSs--The Chicago White Somms) or Constellation pays the bills. I think I object to them insisting on being sommeliers. Sorry, boys and girls, you're salespeople. Nothing wrong with salespeople. Embrace it.

Ron,Fabulous stuff! "What level are you?" and "Did you see Somm" are the 2 most annoying things about my job. Now I know the answer to the first question: "I parked on 4D today." The second one is why there's a knife on my corkscrew. Sincerely,Paul R Ellis, a working wine steward (no initials)

Bonnie!Lovely to see you here. I miss you. And, you know, it's really hard to believe I don't get invited to Pebble Beach Food & Wine with all of those glamourous, worldly and charming sommeliers. Though it would be the perfect occasion to begin the eradication when the day comes. Maybe I'm better of home alone.

Give the HoseMaster's regards to all the people there with letters after their names! And let me know when you're next in NorCal wine country, Bonnie. I would love to see you.

Soft-drink makers have a new way to pitch their sweet beverages: They contain sugar. [*]

. . .

This week, PepsiCo is rolling out a line of soda the company says is inspired by the original cola formula created by its founder in 1893. Cans list “real sugar” among the ingredients. New television ads to launch next week will feature a sommelier in a leather chair swirling the soft drink in a brandy glass before chugging it. “Refined,” he says.

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About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.

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